THE 101 Lecture 7 1. I have been talking about the characteristics of musical theater and the

Transcription

1 THE 101 Lecture 7 1 I have been talking about the characteristics of musical theater and the development of American musical theater, that which is sort of our contribution to the theatrical world. From somewhere, early 1940s to the mid 1960s or so, a period of probably about 25 years, this period is frequently referred to as the Golden Age of the American musical. In fact, probably most of the or many of the titles which one thinks of when one talks about musical theater and many of the titles that perhaps you have seen or have been done in high schools or colleges or other organizations, many of those titles have indeed come from this Golden Age of the musical. We talked about and developed last time at some length the team of Rogers and Hammerstein and their first creation of Oklahoma. Following that creation of Oklahoma, they were to continue writing together from 1943 until 1959 upon the death of Oscar Hammerstein. In that period of time they produced some titles which have remained among the great titles, great musicals of the American musical theater: Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and then their final work together, The Sound of Music. And The Sound of Music, of course, then became moved from the stage into the film world and become one of the most successful musicals ever made. There are many other titles that we could certainly come up with and talk about from this era. Again, another team of Lerner and Lowe who produced Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot. And then there are indeed other great comic musicals and one should certainly not leave them out, and indeed carrying on the tradition of being musical

2 THE 101 Lecture 7 2 comedy. But such titles as Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Annie Get Your Gun, Damn Yankees, Hello Dolly. And, of course, musicals that also continued that tradition of celebrating American life and American tradition and American values in such things as Meredith Wilson s The Music Man. And, in fact, this particular musical is one in which there is the soul creator and that is that Meredith Wilson did indeed write the book, the dialogue, the lyrics, and the music for The Music Man. Also during this period of time we moved from being musical comedy into the serious musical. And, in fact, it is the very reason that eventually the word comedy was sort of grew up from this category and it simply became the musical. Because we had such things as West Side Story which was the Romeo and Juliet story from Shakespeare, the Romeo and Juliet story moved to New York City in the 1950s and to the gang warfare that existed then during that period of time. Or the musical Gypsy which, while certainly it has some funny moments in it, is however very much about a mother who was quite a monster, a mother who drives her daughters to live the life that she wanted but never had a chance to live and that is to be a part of show business. And things like Fiddler on the Roof which again which deals with persecution of Jews in Russia in the czarist period and then eventually which leads then to the Jews being driven out of Russia and immigrating into other lands. Now, all of these are a part of what we sometimes call the strong book musical or sometimes referred to as the organic unity musicals. Every element here the music, the songs, the dance, the dialogue everything here is driven by in some way

3 THE 101 Lecture 7 3 developing either the story or the characters who are a part of the story. All of these elements are integrated. We talked last time about how Agnes DeMille sort of took that final piece and that is, in this case, dance, artistic dance, and integrated it into Oklahoma. So that we find then in all of these musicals that every element comes together here to be a part of a totality, to be a part of a unity. Well, in all movements, in all artistic movements, they go through phases and that is they have a point at which they begin, they develop, they have a kind of full flowering and that is it is very nature oriented here. They have a flowering. And then once they have reached that full flowering, they go into decline. Well, just as this is exactly what happened in Mother Nature, then the same thing happens in artistic movements and they have a point at which they reach a zenith and they re full flowering. At that point they move into their final stage, the stage of decline. This is exactly what happened in the American musical and that is by the time we reached the late 50s and into the early 60s, we began to find specifically, some of the ones I named earlier but Gypsy and West Side Story. We find then that that is, if anything, sort of the zenith of this organic musical story, of organic character driven musicals here. And so then at that point, once we reached that point, then we began to find that it s necessary to find something else, to move on, to move to a new movement, to move to a new staging of some kind. And also what we find here is that both what was happening in American popular music and also what was happening in the American society of the time begins to be reflected in the problems that then the American musical begins to develop

4 THE 101 Lecture 7 4 by the end of the 1960s. By the end of the 60s, American popular music is no longer the sound of the music which had developed in the 20s and the 30s and continued on into the 40s and into the 50s. Frequently what we still today call American popular song standards. But what now happens is that by the middle 50s and on into the early 60s, American popular music has changed. There begin to appear on the scene artists like Chubby Checkers and Elvis Presley and The Doors. And then the invasion from England with the Beetles, with Mick Jagger, with many other artists, and that no longer sounds like American popular music. There is now a completely different kind of sound. But what happens is the American musical doesn t absorb that change. The American musical no longer is a part of American popular music. It s still continuing into the same vein that it had been writing in in the 40s and the 50s. And so the writers of the American musical now are no longer the writers of American popular music as they had been for almost the 50 years prior to that. There are now a whole new series of artists who are a part of the popular scene and that is no longer a part of the American musical. We also find that at this time we are -- by the mid 1960s, we are at the beginning of the Vietnam controversy. We are in a great period of unrest in society. And that unity which the American musical had certainly no longer a sign of the times that we are in. Most of all, those values that the American musical celebrated and that is those values of American life, American philosophy, American belief what we find is by the mid 1960s all of those beliefs, all of those philosophies, are being challenged, are being upset.

5 THE 101 Lecture 7 5 And so now we find that the American musical is perhaps exonerating and writing musicals about values for which a great part of the society no longer even believes in. We now find that the American musical is in problems. It is needing to find a new form, it is needing to find a new sound, and it needs to find a new way to go. But seemingly the people who were working in the musical at this time are not do not give an awareness of this. They are the writers who, yes, have come through the background of the 30s and the 40s and the 50s, and they do not seem to realize that there is a need to change here. There begin to be signs that there are some breaks that are coming, that there are some some experimentation is going to take place, and maybe one of the first departures that we find is in 1966 in the musical called Cabaret, a musical with music and lyrics by Cander and Ebb. The breakdown here or where Cabaret differs from the musicals that have preceded it is that the Cabaret, while it is a book musical, does indeed have a story taken from a book called Berlin Story. The stories are set in Berlin in the 1930s, the story of Sally Bowles. And Sally Bowles works at a nightclub in Berlin called the Kit-Kat Club. But what we find then is that the story of Cabaret is the story of Sally Bowles. But then within the story there is sort of a framework that goes around that story and that is the various scenes or maybe we should say the numbers that take place within the Kit-Kat Club itself. And there is then an emcee within the Kit-Kat Club, and it starts, in fact, with a very direct invitation to the audience with his Wilkomen, his welcome, which is the opening number. And the emcee is moving the audience into the world of Berlin of the 1930s, the Berlin just before the rise or during the rise of Nazism but before Hitler has

6 THE 101 Lecture 7 6 taken power. And so the emcee welcomes us into this world of which Sally Bowles is an entertainer. Now, the numbers that the emcee will do throughout the musical lie outside the story of Sally Bowles. By being outside, meaning that they frequently become songs which comment on situations that are developing within the story themselves. So these songs move outside of the story. They are not a part of the organic unit. They are not contributing directly to, but instead are being outside that story and are now commenting on it in some way or the other. What we also find here is that Cander and Ebb are drawing some for the time when it was written from 1965, 1966 that they are drawing some parallels between America and the unrest that was going on in our country just starting in the mid 1960s and what was happening in Berlin in the early 1930s. What we have begun to do, then, here is we have begun to fragment this structure that the particular musical is here. Instead of it being an organic unity and everything tying together in some way, we have begun to fragment this. And this is exactly what the musical Cabaret does. The individual who is to carry this on and who is to become the American master of musical theater from this period in the mid 1960s down to the present day is Steven Sondheim. Now, Steven Sondheim was born in As a boy he was family friends with Oscar Hammerstein. He was friends with the sons of Oscar Hammerstein. Sondheim adored Oscar Hammerstein and Oscar Hammerstein became a kind of surrogate father to him after Sondheim s parents divorced. But Sondheim felt that he wanted to write musicals and he asked Hammerstein to

7 THE 101 Lecture 7 7 help him. In many ways, Hammerstein was certainly one of the major influences on the development of Sondheim as a writer. Certainly many of the things that Hammerstein that Sondheim learned about writing lyrics he learned from Oscar Hammerstein. But Sondheim was not content to continue writing the same kind of musicals that Rogers and Hammerstein had written and instead he wanted to branch out and to push the limits of what could be accomplished in the American musical. One of the first musicals in which he wrote both music and lyrics is the farce musical called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and it has remained down to the present day one of the most successful musicals that Sondheim has written. Successful that is in terms of number of productions and the money that it has earned Sondheim as a creator. However, that which we basically know Sondheim for will be the musicals that he started writing and developing starting in 1970 with the musical Company. Company is one of those musicals again that is now breaking down the organic unity that was present in the earlier musicals. In fact, Company is sometimes referred to as the first concept musical. And by concept meaning that the unity here or that which maybe we d better put it this way. That which ties the musical together is not necessarily a strongly developed story, but is instead an idea or a concept. In this case, the concept is a married wife. And what we see in the musical, then, is Bobby who is a bachelor, Bobby who finds it difficult to commit himself, Bobby who has what in the early 1970s perhaps was called narcissism. Bobby as an individual finds it very difficult to make a true commitment to any

8 THE 101 Lecture 7 8 single individual. What we see developing in Company, then, is a series of scenes in which Bobby and his very married friends and there are five couples here and each one of them has a particular scene with Bobby when Bobby is visiting them or Bobby is out with them in some way or the other. And what we get then is a rather acerbic view of married life. And Bobby sees this with each of these couples. And the musical takes place at the point at which supposedly all of these couples are coming together to give Bobby a surprise birthday party. By the end of the musical, Bobby hasn t shown up. At that point the friends all recognize that Bobby isn t coming and that they need to leave Bobby alone, and that he needs to find his own way of making his own commitment. And the last song in the show which is Bobby s is called Being Alive and is where all of these various strands are brought together by Sondheim in the music and the lyrics here of this title song. This particular musical was extremely successful, both first in New York and then in London. It set a tone and it certainly in many ways set the American musical on its turned it upside down and set it on its head. Sondheim was to continue this with a whole series of experimental musicals of some kind or the other, each one of which was an attempt to push the musical farther, to make the musical somehow or the other see what else it could do. Where does one go when one moves away from the strong book musical from the story centered musical? What does one do? Company was followed by Follies and Follies in many ways is called the musical in which Sondheim has deconstructed what the American musical is all about. It is also in some ways his homage to the American musical. Because throughout the

9 THE 101 Lecture 7 9 musical, he writes various numbers that echo what the music of American musicals was like from the turn of the century into the 20s, into the 30s, into the 40s, but setting all of this into the period of the 1970s when this particular musical was written. Then came A Little Night Music. In some ways, A Little Night Music may be Sondheim s operetta. Because among other things, the task that he set out for himself here is to take three-quarter time music and that is that which was the basis especially of the Viennese operetta of the 1880s and then again right at the turn of the century. Sondheim now experiments and sees what can he do and writing every piece of music in the show in three-quarter time. And what can he do there and is very much in the vein of an operetta, in the Viennese operetta. It is also from A Little Night Music that the song which perhaps has become the best known of all songs that Sondheim has written comes from, and that is the song Send in the Clowns. Then comes a musical called Pacific Overture. In this case, this is an experiment to see what happens if one writes a musical about the period when the Americans visit Japan for the first time in the 1850s, and you take that as the subject and you combine that with Japanese Kabuki staging, and you write an American western musical about this. It s a wonderful musical. It was not to everyone s taste but certainly again experimenting to see what could be done with it. Then comes Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd is perhaps here where Sondheim is at his most operatic that is, especially in terms of the music that he wrote here. Sweeney Todd is the story about taken from a 19 th century melodrama of a barber called Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. So taking that 19 th century

10 THE 101 Lecture 7 10 melodrama and turning it into a modern American musical. But also because of the melodramatic nature of the story, giving it very much the songs which began to have a very operatic tinge about them. Sunday in the Park with George comes in the early 1980s. In this particular musical it is a musical about artistic creation. Using the French artist George Sara Sondheim writes a musical about George and the great painting that Sara did, Sunday on the Grande Jant, a painting that he did. This musical is, in the first act, about the creation of that particular painting. Throughout this musical, the Sara was called a pointillist and that pointillist meaning he painted in little dots. One dot next to another dot next to another dot next to another dot next to another dot. When the whole thing is finished, one can then see the complete painting but it was done one dot at a time. Sondheim finds music to use that reflects and it gives a musical sound to the pointillist technique of the painting. Then comes what has become the second or the other most popular musical that Sondheim has written called Into the Woods. Into the Woods is a wild experiment in which Sondheim and his the man who wrote the book for him, James LaPine, bring together various Grimm fairytales. What happens if you cross all of these fairytales Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and you cross all of these stories in the first act of the musical, and at the end of the first act where all of those fairytales are and everybody lives happily ever after. Then comes Act 2 of Into the Woods and now we have moved beyond that moment and we begin to find out that now most of these characters do not have that the dream that they had at the end where

11 THE 101 Lecture 7 11 everybody lives happily ever after is not how they develop at all, and that one does not live happily ever after. Sondheim also wrote the musical called Assassins. Again, here working with a playwright by the name of Jerome Weidman, they brought the idea of what happens if you bring together into one musical those various people who have attempted to assassinate the various U.S. presidents. So would John Wilkes Booth and all of the other assassins they come together in this one musical and they cross their paths and develop into a fascinating musical which some people have found very, very disturbing. Perhaps they looked and think that what Sondheim and Weidman are doing here is they are glorifying the assassins and that is not what they re doing at all. What they are doing is looking at how has violence been a part of American society by specifically looking at then how has the violence that has been attempted on the various American presidents how is that a symbol of the violence in American society. Certainly none of the musicals that Sondheim writes are ever simple. They are very complex and every one of them has in some way or the other attempted to see what could be done with musical form and how could it be pushed, how could it be experimented with. Even down into the 21 st century, now with Sondheim into his seventies, he is still working on a musical and -- is still working on the Broadway musical and still experimenting and pushing it to see what can be done here. Because in many ways perhaps what Sondheim does is with every piece that he creates, that it is so superb that there is no way to improve upon it. So in many ways while Sondheim is indeed the American master of the musical for the last 30 years or more, the

12 THE 101 Lecture 7 12 path that Sondheim has broken has not been easily followed by other individuals. And so Sondheim did not necessarily always open up new paths for other people to follow. Sondheim opened new paths but also at the same time sort of closed them off with that particular work because it was so individually great within itself. What we also find during this period is that now we begin to drop American from the word the musical. Because starting again in the 1970s, we begin to have the English invasion of the American musical. Now, the American musicals and especially the musicals of the Golden Age were extremely popular in London. In fact, when the famous Drury Lane Theater in London, which had a heavy bomb damage during World War II when it was restored and rebuilt and reopened in 1947, that work which was chosen to celebrate the opening of the historic and beloved Drury Lane Theater was indeed an American musical, Oklahoma. And the Drury Lane Theater continued to be the home to American musicals for many years thereafter. So the American musical became very much a staple in London West End and the London West End is the home of the commercial theater in London just as Broadway is the home of the commercial theater, American theater, musical theater, in New York. The counterpart to it in London is called the West End. And American musicals were enormously popular and continue to be down to the present day. And are frequently and often produced in the English theater. But there have been a few writers of English musicals themselves, but it was finally to be starting in 1971 with the work of the composer Andrew Lloyd Weber and his lyric writer, Tim Rice, that the true English invasion of the American musical was to take place

13 THE 101 Lecture 7 13 to such an extent that now, certainly by the 1990s and into the 21 st century, no longer is it the American musical. It s now just the musical. The first musical that was produced by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice is Jesus Christ Superstar. And it is indeed, as indicated here, the basic story of the the life of Jesus Christ here. It is told through a series of songs. And by that, meaning it has no dialogue. In fact, it is what we now call a through composed work. It has no dialogue in it. We simply move from one song to another song to another song to another song. But and here begins to be the great difference that we re talking about, and that is that Andrew Lloyd Weber, who was born in 1948, grew up then on what? Grew up on rock music, grew up on the English rock of The Beetles, of Mick Jagger, of the many other English rock musicians. And so therefore when Andrew Lloyd Weber then turned to writing musicals, it is not the sound of American popular music that he is going to turn to or that he is going to use as a model. Instead, it is going to be that music which he grew up on. And so what we find, then, is that with Jesus Christ Superstar, that he brings then the sound of the rock music to then the musical. And so therefore what we find is that Lloyd Weber and by the way, that is one of those unhyphenated double last names that the English are so frequently fond of. But what Lloyd Weber does is that it is a very, very eclectic sound. In fact, it doesn t even have a unity of sound to it so that instead Andrew Lloyd Weber brings in rock and he brings in calypso and he brings in folk and he brings in the ballad from popular music. And all of these are grandly mixed in this particular work. Jesus Christ Superstar is followed with a work called Joseph and the Amazing

14 THE 101 Lecture 7 14 Technicolor Dream Coat. Now in actuality, Joseph had been written before Jesus Christ Superstar, but it had not been written for any thought of being produced. It had been written for as a kind of performance, a piece for a school work to use in a music concert. But after the great success of Jesus Christ Superstar, Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice went back to it and what had been originally about a 25- or 30-minute piece. They now expanded on it and developed it into a full-length work. And then at that point it was picked up and it was turned into a musical. Now, actually neither of these began I should say began like that is Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat neither really began with the idea of being musical productions. In fact, when their first I guess one would say their first life was as a concept record album and this was what they were intended to be. Because again, remember Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice didn t come through this tradition of the American musical. And so instead they were simply thinking in terms of writing a series of songs which would be put out on a record album, which would then become a best-seller and make them lots of money. And it was only after the record album that then theater producers began looking at it and saying, Well, you know, I think this can be turned into a musical production. And first Jesus Christ Superstar, then Joseph and the Amazing Color Dream Coat, and then followed with another musical another sort of song cycle a la musical called Evita. Now, all of these are through composed. By that meaning again there s little or no dialogue and no real scenes, dialogue scenes that happen between characters. Everything happened within the song. And so therefore we move from song to song to

15 THE 101 Lecture 7 15 song, sometimes solo numbers, sometimes duos, sometimes chorus numbers, but we move from the song to song rather than having any kind of dialogue scenes that develop here in some way or the other. After the work with Evita, Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice split. Tim Rice goes on and does other works, musical works, and Andrew Lloyd Weber then turns and begins to look around for a new source. He finds inspiration in turning to some poems that had been written by the American born but became English poet, T.S. Eliot and a collection of poems that T.S. Eliot had written called Cats or about cats. And so Andrew Lloyd Weber got permission from Eliot s widow to take some of these poems and to begin writing songs about them, and to develop it into a production. And in 1981, along with the director, Trevor Nunn, who worked with Lloyd Weber here, they developed then what has become the most successful and popular musical of all times called Cats. Now, in this case there is very little story involved. Each of the songs is about a different particular kind of cat and the songs then all come together to form a totality of the musical. What happens here is if there is any story, it is how the alley cat, Grisabella, can perhaps for her desolate life that she has lived here, that she can find redemption in some way which leads to then the climactic moment in the musical when Grisabella sings what has become perhaps certainly one of the most popular songs that Lloyd Weber has written and has certainly moved into the pantheon of songs, and that is the song Memories. Cats continued after its London production opened. Then within the year the New York production opened and the production was to play on Broadway in New York

16 THE 101 Lecture 7 16 for more than 20 years, and in London was to continue for nearly 25 years. And by that please realize we re talking about eight performances a week, 52 weeks a year, and in New York it ran on for a little more than 20 years we find this musical playing. It, of course, then also toured throughout the country and certainly is a musical that perhaps has been seen by more people than any other musical has ever been seen. Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote other musicals but in 1986 he took a highly dramatic work, a French novel, and turned it into a musical called The Phantom of the Opera. And again, The Phantom of the Opera looks as if it is certainly had every chance of following on the great success of Cats and continues to be down into the 21 st century still a popular work in both New York and in London. Phantom of the Opera is in many ways Andrew Lloyd Weber s opera. That and the next work that he wrote after that in the 1990s called Sunset Boulevard. Both of those certainly began to sound far more operatic, that is in terms of the sound of the music, and the rock sound and the rock music of the early works of Superstar and Joseph and Evita. All of that has been left behind and Andrew Lloyd Weber is now exploring new sounds and new ways in which to make what to do with quite melodramatic and romantic subjects. In fact, one of the people who played one of the stars who played the lead role in Sunset Boulevard, Betty Buckley in her concerts, she usually sings either one there are two big songs that the leading character has in Sunset Boulevard and Betty Buckley frequently includes them in her individual concerts that she gives across the country. And whenever she introduces one of those songs, she calls it the aria, using that

17 THE 101 Lecture 7 17 operatic term for what is a song. Betty Buckley calls it the arias that Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote in Sunset Boulevard. We also find now with the English invasion, we have a kind of French invasion although in this case it s sort of a French invasion coupled with sort of an English tone to it also. But specifically, another extremely successful musical of the period opening in 1985 and still continuing down to the present day in production in both New York and in London is a musical called Les Miserables, or usually referred to as Les Mis. And in this particular case, this was a musical that was first written and presented in Paris by Alan Bublio and Claude Michel Schoenberg. And they wrote this work based on the great French novel by Victor Hugo and presented the work in Paris. The English produce, Cameron McIntosh, the great London producer of musicals, saw the work in Paris and at that point then set up a contract with Bublio and Schoenberg for them to work with an English writer and that they would now do a translation and sort of English-ize, I suppose one could say, this work of Les Miserables. Also then bringing in the director, Trevor Nunn. Remember, I mentioned Trevor Nunn who had worked as a director and also had done some lyric writing for Andrew Lloyd Weber s Cats. So Trevor Nunn now comes into the scene brought in by Cameron McIntosh and he also works with Bublio and Schoenberg, and they then take this great, sprawling novel about not about the French Revolution that we think of of the 1789 and 1790s, but instead a later period in which the French public were in revolution of And so taking then Les Miserables, turn it into this great, huge, epic, sprawling musical and it opened in London. It was enormously successful, then opened in New York and

18 THE 101 Lecture 7 18 was enormously successful, and opened in many, many productions throughout Western Europe and, in fact, throughout most of the Western world. The team of Bublio and Schoenberg also wrote another musical called Miss Saigon and in this particular case the musical, using the same material that the opera composer Puccini used in his opera, Madame Butterfly, these two took that story of the American sailor who goes to Japan, takes a Japanese woman as his wife, and who then leaves behind her not knowing, leaves her behind, returns to America, not knowing that she is pregnant and that she is giving birth will give birth to a son. They took this story, moved it from the period of the Balasco play, the Puccini opera, and move it instead to America Vietnam of the 1960s. And now instead of the sailor, it is the American it is the American soldier, and instead of a Japanese woman it is a Vietnamese woman. But the story still plays itself out there. So, as you can see, we have come down to the 1990s into the 21 st century and what we find is the American musical is indeed floundering. And that is it is not sure where it is going. And the new composers and the new writers are experimenting and trying to find what is now the musical going to be in the 21 st century. And what we find here as we look at it, we can begin to see that so far as the musical productions themselves are concerned not necessarily what is being written, but in terms of what is now being produced by groups across the country who are doing American musicals, what we find is that there are sort of three things that are happening here. One, we could call it mining the past. And by mining the past, what we mean is among other things looking at the music not necessarily the music of musicals, but looking at the music of

19 THE 101 Lecture 7 19 our past, of the 20 th century, what was popular at the turn of the century, what did various composers who wrote popular music, what music did they write, and drawing these various these songs and music together have put them together in various reviews of one kind or the other. Ain t Misbehaving, Sophisticated Lady, Eubie, all of which are musicals that have looking at the composers, especially African American composers, looking at the music that they have written and then constructing reviews around them. So mining the past, using music of an earlier time to create new musical reviews. The second mining of the past is revising and updating earlier musicals, frequently realizing that the book that holds that musical together is now badly dated. Then perhaps writing new books for it or using the basic book but now updating it or changing it in some way or the other, revising it in such a way. Keep the music, keep the songs, but rework the book so as to make it more compatible for present day audiences in some way. So thus we find mining the past by revising and updating early musicals. And the third which is certainly fairly obvious and that is doing new productions of past successful musicals. So therefore we find that Oklahoma will be given a new production in the 1980s. And then we come at the end of the 21 st century and there ll be another new production of Oklahoma and many other great musicals. We are now recognizing the musical has a history, the musical has a heritage, the musical has great works just as in the world of opera. They constantly are doing new productions of the operas of Verdi and Puccini and the other great opera writers. What is happening today is we are now doing new productions of past successes. Mining the past, one. Two. The other what we also find is that many of the writers are moving the

20 THE 101 Lecture 7 20 musical much more toward operatic forms, and that is the through composed pieces of some kind or the song cycles, or in some cases just the sound of the music itself. And as I mentioned earlier, Sunset Boulevard in which indeed some of the songs in there are comparable to arias from opera and very much have that particular kind of sound. Three. What we find, then, is the continuation of pushing the limits of the book musical, combining it with other forms, trying to see what can we do to take the musical and now continue what was successful but now make it still something which is new, which is fresh, and experimenting with it in some way or the other. So as we are here in the 21 st century, what we re now doing is we are mining our part, we are in many ways exploring how musicals and opera and the operatic nature may be close to each other, and then experimenting and see what is it that the musical is doing and where is it going, and that is one of the interesting things that is happening in the 21 st century. Where is the musical going? It is no longer musical comedy. It is no longer the American musical. It is now the musical of musical theater and what is going to happen with it and what is it going to be doing in the next 10 to 20 years.